Notes : Hope Nunnery was the guest on Sunday Street w. Charlie Backfish (9-11:30 am)"Dry Cleaner" is a Joni Mitchell song. "Don't Let the Whole World Know" was done in concert, with one of the brothers being louder and harder than usual. "Too Much Stuff" is an Eric Bibb song that Robillard does well. "Patterns In the Sky" is one of Jan Krist's best performances. Marie Knight was part of a duo with Rosetta Tharpe some 60 years ago; the pairing gave Tharpe several of her biggest hits. Knight's album is all covers of Gary Davis' gospel material. If the liner notes are to be believed, Knight never met Davis and didn't know his songs, even though they were contemporaries, so she comes to the material with fresh eyes.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

at Brookhaven (NY) Amphitheater. Her usual mix of rock songs with country songs is jarring but interesting. But the contrast was a bit more jarring this night : she did two numbers with bluegrass great Charlie Louvin, then launched into '90s heavy rock/ AOR (with traces of metal) for the next four songs. The new songs in the bunch were, with one exception, harder than even her past forays into hard rock. In a way, that music suits her lyrics better : so many songs were almost clinically cynical and aimed at bursting any bubbles. Lost love, lost faith, lost hope, and most of all, lost joy. Usually (not always) even when it's about sex. She doesn't seem like someone who's actually really lost any of that, but that is her lyric of choice. But then again, there were moments she seemed like she lost track of what she was doing -- all that changing of gears, so much material, maybe some other reasons.

I must say, those are not my kind of song. It shows one kind of reality, but telling reality does not always tell truth, at least when taken in isolated moments almost shorn of context. It tells feelings and thoughts fairly straight, then spins them out so you catch how deep (or shallow) they go. Not bad, but then not good enough, either. It just is, that's all. Maybe that's the most honest way to be. But it does lack something, not as a style but as a way of seeing the world. Lucinda does this way of seeing with consummate skill. But the more you talk/sing like that, the more it starts working on your mind. Both rock and country have ample evidence of that. I hope that doesn't happen to her, but it's a hard path to refuse.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Some things just defy reason. I get reminded of that every day. But there are few times that it strikes me as this hard to understand.

You see, a couple weeks ago, the high school I graduated from apparently came close to having a Columbine-style massacre. Two boys were arrested for their role in this plot that was still not yet ready-to-go. From what has been said in the press, the main plotter apparently didn't have life going so well. The profile that's developing for those who do these sort of things -- God that's scary, that there's enough of them to make a profile -- says that they're socially abused, physically beaten, isolated from their parents and other students, and show signs of instability. Thus they become angry, drawn to violence, despondent about their future, wanting to grab attention in a definitive and unforgettable way. (The Columbine killers did that, for sure.)

The thing I don't understand is, they were me. What did they get that I didn't have in spades? Tauntings. Beatings. Countless concussions. Set-ups. Pranks on me that were done so often and so unimaginatively I eventually became bored with them, in a "ho-hum, it's Tuesday, when my shoes go into the gym rafters" kind of way. For my years in elementary into special-ed and through 11th grade, hardly a day went by without some sort of humiliation. I acted out, sometimes with temper outbursts, sometimes by running and hiding. I was usually alone, and I couldn't get a girlfriend to save my life -- which it full well might have, in the state I was in. And the school staff didn't do right by me either -- I never once made up anything, but I was treated as if I was a grand story-teller. And home life wasn't a prize either. And it's not like there were no very visible examples of violence in a violent world : the Six-Day War, the race riots, Kennedy, King, the skyjackings, Munich.

So, why was it that I never thought to do harm to people? Even those who beat or humiliated me? Why was I so intensely focused on getting through to them, why did I care so much, that the frustration and hurt of their unlove would cause me to act out? Why couldn't I just tell them all to go roast in hell? Why couldn't I hate, or even not care, even for a moment?

And, most importantly, why can these budding murderers hate when I couldn't? What gives them that bitter edge, that cynicism, that screw-you-all spit-in-your-face -ness that would even let the thought cross their minds?

I don't understand. I want to understand, because maybe that will uncover the clues to this murderous mystery, and maybe that will tell me a lot about myself. But I get this nagging feeling that I'll never know, that it will always be something to wonder about, at times like this.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Most people will spread the word high and far about how popular their website is, and boast about their page with the highest usage (in my case, http://www.spirithome.com/angels.html , averaging over 360 users per day, and top 5 in Google searches for 'angels'). But where can you find a site that tells you which ones are the least-used pages? Spirithome.com, of course.

These ten average less than one unique visitor per day, and no external links so far. They are listed with their pagerank and their Google rank for their primary keyword, where there is any known rank.

I'm still trying to figure out this puzzle. I realize that most of these are specialized pages, and will never get angels.html-level use. But they should at least rank in searches. (Of course, I'd love to have you link to them....)

Monday, July 16, 2007

I've been at two local live music events this summer, with another one coming next week (the Riverhead Blues Festival). Some quick notes :

(1) You know you're old when the people who are 10 years younger than you look old.

(2) There is a race gap in these events. Not on stage : that's fairly well integrated. But there are usually more African-Americans on stage than in the crowd. Part of that's #3 below. But is that all there is to it?...

(3) These events are really for guitar-based rock audiences. Sure, there's some electric blues and soul, but that's in guitar-rock's roots from the start and have always been present at these festivals. But the heart of it is album rock. Understandable : their sounds 30+ years ago created most of the festivals. Yet it is an aging sound, now mostly for 35-55-year-olds. (At least one group, the Defibrillators, has fun with that.)

(4) Two main products : guitar-rock and beer. Oh - and two others : beer bellies and thick thighs.

(5) These fans do bring their kids, and there's always the kid who's up front below playing their toy guitar like the musician on stage. The 5-year old boy on Friday was especially into it. I expect to see his first album available for download soon.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

There are some things about the online dating stuff that just feels strange.

For instance, what happened a week ago. I got a sudden burst of emails at one of the sites I'm part of. That in itself is strange -- I can send out 30 letters before getting a single non-automated reply, and I almost never get someone contacting me first. Just seeing the number of incomings, I got suspicious. But I looked at them all.

Each was of a different woman with a different account. (Well, one was really a girl -- says 18, but had to be at least 2 yrs younger.) Each was from either Eastern Europe or Taiwan. And the self-description paragraphs had a strangely similar sound to them -- they covered the same topics, and used many of the same words. Each had 5 photos -- not 4, not 6, always exactly 5 -- and four of them would be each of the same 4 types. A front facial, a lightly-clad frontal full-body, an almost-direct side view, and a view lying mainly clothed in bed with body front turned toward the camera. The fifth would cover what could be considered their best view, which was different for each one. The two busty women had a cleavage shot with a slight down angle (the same angle in each), another had a 60-degree facial shot for a great look, two others showed the woman's athleticism by running basepaths. Another had a beach shot that bore an eery resemblance to the hot inside come-on photo in Alison Krauss' new album (which only just now got released, so how??). The last two had scenes of each woman enjoying herself in Paris, with drink in hand.

It's obvious that all eight profiles were produced (and probably sent) by the same person or firm. I must admit it was professionally done, with a good eye for details and an awareness of the qualities of each specific 'product'. The strangest part is that they apparently picked up on something in my own profile that told them I was likely to go for what they had. Each profile mentioned a certain set of styles of music -- acappella and singer-songwriter -- that are uncommon in combination, and even mentioned a specific band in neither genre ("Iona UK", which is not how the band identifies itself). I have to think that the marketeer found my profile through a search mechanism for keywords, then actually looked at my profile, and took the time to slightly tailor theirs to mine. I have to admit, if it weren't for their location and sameness, I might have gone for it. Each of the eight were a somewhat different kind of wow, which if there was just one and it was in the New York Metro, I would have eagerly sent an email. But 8? On the other side of the world? In an obviously 'managed' fashion? No. But the profiles' polish (~ Polish?) makes me think that this could be a trend. A consultant who uses existing dating services as a place to market marriageables by putting their best foot forward. Could be a 'next big thing' in online dating.